THE BEST FREE MP3 PLAYER
Written: Oct 21 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Looks nice, all legal content, nice plugins and skins.
Cons: You have to update playlists, and plugins are often xMB (not good for 56K modems).
The Bottom Line: It's a very smart desktop Hi-Fi, very customsiable so it can be exactly what you want it to be.
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| thebluecomet's Full Review: WinAmp |
600 WORD REVIEW
In my opinion, there is nothing that beats Winamp on the net if you are looking for an mp3 player. The download is only about 1MB and there is just a massive range of features.
I downloaded Winamp having got a bit sick of using the Napster Internal Player - it would take quite some time to load up the files and apart from random play there were no special features.
But that's because the Napster Player is not the main feature of Napster - Winamp on the other hand dedicate themselves to providing the user with a top quality piece of software.
What I am most impressed with is just how it looks - it is such a neat addition to the desktop. The player is in three parts - the top section shows the file name playing, has the pause, stop... buttons etc. The second part has a graphic equaliser, the bottom one the playlist.
You can mix and match these three sections, remove one of them, place them in different orders etc... not a big deal but means that it can be customised to meet your demands.
What makes the look-factor better is that you can download skins. If you don't know about this concept, skins are small downloads, usually about 200KB, which give the player a whole new look, e.g. you can have a music band theme so that the background is of the band... And on the Winamp.com main site there are absolutely thousands of skins to choose from - all legal of course, and I have found some outstanding 3D skins that really spice it up!
The graphic equalizer thing is incredibly clever considering that the programming for it must be rather basic - often you can split up a track into its 8 separate channels using the equilizer. Bringing up one of the bars may pump up one of the guitars, and taking one off may completely remove the vocals. Very clever indeed.
You can set up separate "Playlists" - so you load up a file called "Rock" and all your rock music is put up, load "Ballads" and all... etc. The problem is that if get more mp3 files, the Winamp playlist will not automaticallu update itself - instead you need to manually add these files to the playlist.
The best feature of Winamp in my opinion, though some may believe that this is a gimmick, is the ability to download a wide variety of PLUGINS. Plugins are *larger* downloads available that give the exisitng programme increasing functionality. For example you can download a plugin that produces stunning graphical effects - it picks up the beat of the music and does multicoloured kaleidoscope effects to the music.
The problem is that a lot of these plugins might be a few megabytes and require OpenGL and a good 3D card, but I found a very nice one for 500KB that works very nicely on my pathetic little PC.
There is an oscilloscope thing on the winamp window that works like a hi-fi in showing moving bars that synchronise to the music. Another aesthetically pleasing feature.
And Winamp also uses the full power of the web - you can use it to play 24 hour Internet radio stations and there are links to download free LEGAL mp3s. Unlike a rival site we all know about...because Winamp is fully legal there will not be long term problems - it will never have court orders shutting it down.
And it looks great. Go to the site and look at demo screenshots. Ciao.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
thebluecomet
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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